Republicans, who don’t have the votes to repeal the ACA directly, are hoping to use this strict budget strategy that requires only a majority vote to strip the health law of provisions they oppose. (Julie Rovner and Francis Ying,
2/6)

Sign up to get the daily edition in your inbox

Summaries Of The News:

In an echo of the fervent turnout to lawmakers' town hall meetings in 2009, protesters are now showing up to urge Republicans not to overturn the health law

The Associated Press:
House GOP Lawmakers Face Tough Questions On Health Care
Angry constituents confronted Republican lawmakers at separate town halls in California and Florida, fearful of the GOP promise to repeal former President Barack Obama’s health care law without a comprehensive alternative. In California, Rep. Tom McClintock faced tough questions on Saturday about health care and President Donald Trump’s agenda and had to be escorted by police after his hour-long event. Protesters followed him, shouting “Shame on you!” In an equally conservative district in Florida, Rep. Gus Bilirakis answered questions from frustrated town hall attendees who worried about the loss of insurance and higher premiums if the law is repealed. (2/5)

In an era where officials speak of deregulating and "streamlining" the FDA, a story of a blockbuster drug demonstrates the possible pitfalls of removing thorough vetting of experimental treatments.

Los Angeles Times:
Trump And Congress May Make It Easier To Get Drugs Approved — Even If They Don’T Work
In June, pharmaceutical giant Genentech sent doctors a letter saying they should no longer prescribe a blockbuster drug called Tarceva to most patients suffering from lung cancer. A study had found that only a small number of patients — those with a certain gene mutation — might be helped by the drug, the company said.The news upended a 2010 decision by the Food and Drug Administration to greatly expand use of the $94,000-a-year drug, despite warnings from a panel of experts that said there was little evidence it actually worked. (Petersen, 2/3)

Due to spiking insulin prices and other contributing factors, it is now one of the country's most expensive diseases.

Sacramento Bee:
Diabetes Among The Most Expensive American Diseases, As Drug Prices Spike
With an estimated 30 million Americans struggling with diabetes, the disease is one of the nation’s most entrenched chronic conditions. It’s also one of the most expensive. ... The cost of insulin alone has spiked by triple-digit percentages in the past 20 years. “It’s horrible for patients,” said N. Chesney Hoagland-Fuchs, a registered nurse and chairwoman of the Diabetes Coalition of California. She said prices for insulin medications began a slow climb after the recession and started “shooting up” around 2013. (Buck, 2/5)

The patent dispute over the gene editing technology has been with the court for two months, but some observers believe a decision could be coming soon.

Stat:
Waiting For The CRISPR Patent Decision? Here's What We Know
It’s been 61 days since the one and only oral argument in the CRISPR patent case. Where’s the decision? Investors, lawyers, patent agents, biotech executives, and scientists have been anxiously waiting for the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to decide whether foundational CRISPR-Cas9 patents awarded to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT beginning in 2014 “interfered” with a patent application filed in 2012 by the University of California. Based on the time it usually takes PTAB to hand down a decision, this one should arrive “any day now,” said Jacob Sherkow of New York Law School, an expert on intellectual property law. (Begley, 2/6)

Supporters of the movement contended that residents in the Russian River corridor receive little benefit from the Palm Drive Health Care District.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
Sonoma West Medical Center Expects Sharp Cut In Tax Funding After Pullout Prevails
A two-year campaign by Russian River-area residents seeking to abandon the taxing district that supports the struggling Sonoma West Medical Center in Sebastopol has prevailed, and the fallout is expected to immediately add to the financial challenges facing the small hospital serving western Sonoma County. The “detachment” effort, waged by a group calling itself Taxpayers Against Unfair Taxes, or TAUT, will reduce the annual contribution made by the Palm Drive Health Care District to the hospital by 40 percent, to $600,000. Currently, the district collects $4.2 million in parcel taxes from residents stretching from Sebastopol and along the Russian River to the coast. (Espinoza, 2/3)

In other news —

Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
Sonoma County’s Chanate Road Ex-Hospital Site Could Become 800-Unit Housing Development
Sonoma County supervisors are considering an ambitious plan to sell the 82-acre site of the former Sutter Medical Center off Chanate Road in Santa Rosa to a prominent local developer who wants to build as many as 800 new housing units there. The Board of Supervisors is expected to vote Tuesday on moving forward with a proposal that, if ultimately finalized, would mark the county’s largest land sale in recent history. Developer Bill Gallaher and his team would pay as much as $12.5 million in cash for the property, though county officials say the deal is worth many millions more when various cost savings are taken into account. (Morris, 2/5)

The Coast Guard and EPA have acknowledged the information gaps but have done little to fill them.

Center for Investigative Reporting:
US Government Fails To Track Toxic Spills In Nation’s Waterways
An examination of the database, funded by Marquette University’s O’Brien Fellowship for Public Service Journalism, found that the federal government routinely fails to list the amount of toxic chemicals spilled into the nation’s waterways, leaving the public in the dark about spills’ impacts on residents, neighborhoods and the environment. According to the federal database, there were 295 chemical spills from trains into the Mississippi River in 2015 alone, or nearly one every day. That total is actually down somewhat from recent years. Although many of the reported spills were small, the database failed to list the amount spilled in 188 incidents, or more than 60 percent of the spills. (Soley, 2/6)

In other public health news —

Orange County Register:
Joe Biden Offers Hope At Health Summit In Dana Point On His Late Son's Birthday
Speaking on what would have been his late son’s 48th birthday, former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday made an impassioned plea to hundreds of health care industry representatives to waste no time in preventing the loss of life resulting from medical errors and cancer. Biden addressed participants at the fifth annual World Patient Safety, Science and Technology Summit organized by The Patient Safety Movement. The Irvine-based nonprofit operates with the goal of reducing deaths caused by preventable medical errors to zero by 2020. (Bharath, 2/5)

Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
Mendocino County Sheriff Vows To Reduce Deputy Response To Mental Health Crises
Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman has vowed this year to stop sending deputies to nonviolent, emergency mental health calls. Having deputies respond to such crises is a poor use of law enforcement resources, he said, one resulting in the incarceration of people who need psychiatric help, not the frequent outcome of jail. Calling police to a mental health situation can trigger a crime that otherwise would not have occurred, such as resisting arrest, he said. It’s a nationwide issue, with more than half of people incarcerated in local jails estimated to have mental health problems. Two million people with mental illness, most of them nonviolent, are booked into jails each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. (Anderson, 2/5)

Experts say the numbers tell the story of how increased street homelessness, the opioid epidemic and failures in the public health system have combined to turn an already difficult existence into something more lethal.

Orange County Register:
Orange County Homeless Deaths Hit All-Time High
Last year, more than 200 homeless men, women and children lost their lives to drugs, alcohol, mental illness, violence and, in many cases, years of neglect and hard living on the streets, according to reports from the Orange County Coroner's Office reviewed by the Register. ... The death totals for homeless people in the county have jumped in each of the past six years, doubling over the last half decade. In all, 1,305 homeless people have died in Orange County over the past 12 years, about half coming since 2013. (Graham, 2/3)